


Watching

by quickthorn



Category: Pillars of Eternity, Pillars of Eternity: Deadfire
Genre: #046, Deadfire Spoilers, F/M, Pillars Prompts Weekly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-13
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-06-09 19:28:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15274626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quickthorn/pseuds/quickthorn
Summary: Who does the Watcher watch?  Herself, when she is the part of her soul that was taken away by Eothas.  She can only wait and hope that her living counterpart makes the right decisions.  Inspired by Pillars prompt #046 from a couple of weeks ago.





	Watching

 

**Watching**

 

Sandrine remembered the tunnel from her visions. She knew she must be dying or already dead, from all those occasions when she'd looked into souls and saw not only how they died, but had a brief glimpse of the time in-between.

 _Go towards the light. That's how it works._ It looked different this time, not a pinprick which gradually grew as she hurtled towards it, but something more diffuse, made up of...

 _Souls. So many souls._ They glowed around her like a shoal of tropical fish, all flowing onwards as if pulled by an unseen current. If it looked different to what she expected, she could do nothing about it. She could not more resist the pull than death itself.

She didn't think she could feel any more, not physical sensation nor pain, but she felt a sudden pressure which was near-unbearable in its intensity. Like a cork popping out of a shaken bottle. Somewhere in the distance, a bell chimed. A soul – no, part of _her_ soul – wrenched away from her, pulled away in the opposite direction, no more able to control its journey than she was.

She tried to scream. _Wait! Come back! Don't be reborn without me!_

Even then, it was too late. The soul had disappeared from sight.

* * *

The stream of souls gathered, and then there was stillness, before the questions began.

She heard them all. She felt their confusion, their panic, their anger. 

“Where are we?”

“What happened?”

“Why didn't we go to the Wheel?”

“Is it always like this?”

“Were the priests wrong?”

 _Yes, they were wrong. They didn't know the truth about the gods. The gods were made by the Engwithans. Made by kith, long ago. They're constructs!_ She tried to speak, to answer some of them, but she couldn't tell if they heard her.

She had to shut the endless chatter out or she'd go insane. _Focus! Focus on something. Anything._

She thought of the other half of her soul. Had she gone to the Wheel, as a fragment rather than a whole soul?

She saw a flash of light, which formed into three stars in the inky sky above the restless souls. She'd seen that sign before, on that cloak they'd found in the underground temple, the one Edér wanted to wear but it wasn't wise to display his allegiance in Gilded Vale.

“Something beautiful is coming,” one voice said as all the others fell silent. The voice was male, sonorous yet compassionate sounding, which was ironic under the circumstances. “And you, all of you, will be part of it.”

There was a silence, a stillness, before a thousand more questions rang out, including Sandrine's own.

“Why did you destroy my keep?”

He did not answer.

* * *

 

She found a way to cope, to shut out the others. It was ironic that she found relief in the very thing she'd once feared when she was alive. Dreaming. Even in her altered state, as part of a soul without a body, she could dream, after a fashion. Or at least she could fall into a trance that felt like one, for she could not control exactly where she went, or what she saw.

The first time it worked, she found herself waking up, and she was aware that her body was in pain, even though she could not feel it herself. In her dream-state, she opened her eyes, saw wood panels on the ceiling, as if she was inside a log cabin. The room was moving, lifting up and up and up, then suddenly dropping down. She heard the sound of retching, and since her living body felt the same nausea, she closed her eyes again. She heard a man talking. “Best start praying, lad. If we dinna reach that isle soon, we'll all go doon wi' the ship, and nye mistake.”

_Grandfather? No, it's not his voice even if the accent's similar. He's dead, remember? Or is this his life long ago, when he wandered the world in his misbegotten youth? No, this voice sounds elderly._

She heard another voice speaking, in an all too familiar Dyrwood drawl. _Edér? Is that really you?_

She willed herself to control the experience, to act within the dream, but it was a long, slow process. When she finally sat up, she couldn't tell whether she had caused it or the rest of her soul had chosen to move. She looked around and realised she wasn't alone in the room, for there was Edér, sat in a chair opposite her bed, smoking a pipe.

* * *

 

The other souls knew she was different to them. Perhaps Eothas had told them, in words that were not meant for her ears. Perhaps she'd talked during one of her visions of the living Sandrine, just as she'd once mumbled during her Watcher visions. Perhaps they could even see that she had something missing, a link to a soul with a foot in the living world. It did not matter how they came by the information.

What mattered was that they found her different enough to make demands of her. Just as the living had once done to the Watcher of Caed Nua.

They wanted her to talk to her living counterpart, as if she hadn't tried a thousand times so far, to make her hurry up on her journey towards Eothas. They wanted her to talk to Eothas himself, but she'd already tried that a few times. All she could make out was that he was preoccupied with his journey, fixed on a place to the far north. Sometimes they'd all see flashes of places he passed, like one particular port with many cannons, and naga lying in wait to ambush them. Mostly, they saw the sea: endless waves, and storms that the great god passed through without pause.

As for the living Sandrine, wherever she went, it seemed that all the people who could help her wanted something in return, generally something dangerous. Both sides of her soul were in demand, but the living one was forever in danger of joining her other half.

* * *

 

Aloth had never smiled at her like that before, as if he wanted to let her in on a marvellous secret. He was talking to living-Sandrine, telling her how much faith he had in her, and in her reverie, Sandrine's soul watched and listened. They were down by the docks in Queen's Berth, at night, their faces glowing by the lamplight. She felt a faint, unexpected pang of envy. She could tell that her other half was happy, having this quiet conversation, just the two of them together. And then, much to her surprise, Sandrine leaned in and did something she'd wanted to do a long time ago, but never had.

She kissed him.

He froze, just long enough for her soul to groan inwardly. _This won't end well. He'll think she's pushy and has no boundaries. She'll feel mortified and disappointed that he doesn't like her in that way. They'll both be even more awkward with one another now._

But then he began to kiss her back, slowly but in earnest, and she wished that she was truly there with him, instead of caught in this half-life, watching.

* * *

 

Animancers featured in her dreams every now and then, although she did not observe any of the horrors she'd encountered in the Dyrwood. Still, she was shocked when living-Sandrine started actively cooperating with the Vailian animancers, and even stepped through a portal at their behest.

_We weren't in favour of animancy. We thought it should be controlled and strictly limited at best. Now you're stepping through portals made by them? And why does that Glamfellen animancer you recruited look like a fampyr? Have you gone mad?_

She didn't get the impression Sandrine was undercover, and even Aloth seemed to go along with it, albeit with a pointed comment or two. Something had changed, and not just in Sandrine and Aloth's relationship. She might have agreed with Sandrine's decisions, if she saw everything that happened prior to that. Or maybe – if she was reunited with her – different decisions would be made entirely. She couldn't know.

* * *

 

She dreamed once more, and in her dream, she felt whole. She was on the upper deck, feeling the hot sun on her back and the wind in her hair, and she could hear the crew singing.

“Young Gathbin sought the Yenwood's crown

long past the revolution

Way haul away,

We'll haul away and go

 

The Watcher met him on the field

And gave him execution,

Way haul away,

We'll haul away and go.”

_I'm the subject of a song now? How many songs have I learned in the past about people long dead, and now I'm part of a tradition too? How marvellous is that?_

She felt proud and disappointed all at once. Disappointed that she couldn't give voice to all these new songs she was learning, for she heard the singing often, in her reveries. Sometimes men, sometimes women, and as often in tune as not. Living-Sandrine often joined in.  Strange that she thought of Sandrine as separate now. Would they ever be reunited, or was she destined for this afterlife which was too much like eavesdropping on someone else's conversation?

* * *

 

She drifted into her dream, one more time.

She could hear Eothas talking, heard the living part of herself talk back to him, arguing.

 _Good for you! He needs to listen._ It was hard to tell whether the living Sandrine heard her, but she offered her encouragement, even so.

_Help the souls. Help us. We're all stuck here. I want my life – your life – back. But if I can't have that, I want a peace I can't find in here._

She heard her alter-ego speaking. “What happens to all the souls you collected, or the ones who are going to die in future before kith rebuild the Wheel? Can't you see the suffering you will cause, if they have nowhere to go in the meantime?”

“I understand. I will help them, so that they have a place to go.”

_You heard me, didn't you?. Or else we think alike, being halves of the same soul._

She felt that rushing, flying sensation, pulled along as if she were on a piece of string that had just been jerked, and suddenly she knew that she was on a collision course with herself.

* * *

 

She watched, as silent as the others, as Eothas destroyed the Wheel, and himself in the process. She wondered if the other souls had gone to the special place he had mentioned. She couldn't feel their presence now.

She felt pain in her left arm, as if she'd pulled a muscle fighting. Her feet ached. She was alive. Whole. Yet it felt strange and unfamiliar now, as if she was off balance.  She pitched forward slightly, as if adjusting to a ship's movement, then righted herself.

Aloth, who was standing very close to her, slipped his arm around her waist to steady her.

“Are you all right?” he said, his voice hushed.

“I... I'm better than I was,” she said.

Beyond Aloth, she saw Edér, Pallegina and all the new people she hadn't yet met. Although of course she'd been watching them from afar, and the living part of her must have got to know them quite well by now. The slightly grubby-looking priestess. The shark-man who always looked so full of himself. The foul-mouthed yet loyal orlan who reminded her of Hiravias, and didn't, all at the same time. All were there, save for Kana's sister. That was right, she'd left. She remembered a letter, written in anger.

Aloth let go of her waist, only to slip his hand into hers.

“So I wasn't just dreaming about those kisses,” she said. “Did we do more than that? I'd be so annoyed if I missed out.”

“Not yet,” she heard her own voice say in reply. She sounded flustered. “Let's talk about this later.”

“I don't quite follow,” Aloth said, although his ears pinked.

* * *

 

Sandrine felt the shift, even before she came back to herself fully. She also heard what she'd just said, or rather what her soul-fragment had, and realised that she was answering out loud.

She spoke again, and this time it was to Aloth. “I think I just had a 'that was Iselmyr' moment.”

He frowned. “Have you picked up another Awakened soul?”

Edér stepped closer. “Seems like with your luck, it was only a matter of time afore you did.” He sounded weary. No wonder, when he'd just seen what became of his God.

She shook her head, trying to feel her way into how things stood with her now. “No, it's the part of my soul which went missing. Just give me a moment to gather my thoughts.”

Sandrine concentrated, trying to feel whether she was all together again, or whether the rest of her soul still felt separate. She spoke to herself, silently this time. _Are you there?_ No one answered, and she knew that she was whole again, at last.

 


End file.
